You know invariants, pre- and postconditions for source code? Great! Then let's apply this idea of semi-automatic qualitiy control to the world of documents and see what happens ... Note that the term "document" comprises any kind of document, as for instance: technical documentations, books, software specifications, source code, mathematical knowledge, and Web sites.
In this project I try to formalize consistency rules for documents that are governed by a document management system or by a revision control system. These rules are used to generate consistency reports that show precisely when, where, and why inconsistencies occur. Note that pinpointing inconsistencies implements an approach to tolerating inconsistencies. Besides only pinpointing them I also aim at the generation of reasonable suggestions to repair inconsistencies.
Notice that the term "consistency" means to fulfill user-defined requirements, which is different from the term "consistency" used in logics and mathematics. A "consistency rule" is such a user-defined requirement. Then an "inconsistency" is a violation of a user-defined requirement. A "repair" proposes actions documents (like add/change/delete content/documents) in order to resolve one or multiple inconsistencies of one or multiple consistency rules. I do not aim at theorem proving. Consistency checking rather corresponds to model checking.
Last modified: Thu Aug 25 11:40:14 CEST 2005